Integral Yoga Literature - By the Mother

Selections from the Collected Works of the Mother

from Volume 3, On the Dhammapada

(Conjugate Verses)

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Just as the rain penetrates through the thatch of a leaking roof, so the passions
penetrate an unbalanced mind.

There are innummerable small Buddhist sects of all kinds, in China, in Japan, in
Burma, and each one follows its own methods; but the most widespread among
them are those whose sole practice is to make the mind quiet.

They sit down for a few hours in the day and even at night and quiet their mind.
This is for them the key to all realisation -- a quiet mind that knows how to keep
quiet for hours together without roving. You must not believe however that it is a
very easy thing to do, but they have no other object. They do not concentrate
upon any thought, they do not try to understand better, to know more, nothing of
the kind; for them the only way is to have a quiet mind and sometimes they pass
through years and years of effort before they arrive at this result -- to silence the
mind, to keep it absolutely silent and still; for, as it is said here in the
Dhammapada, if the mind is unbalanced, then this constant movement of ideas
following one another, sometimes without any order, ideas contradicting and
opposing each other, ideas that speculate on things, all that jostles about in the
head, makes holes in the roof, as it were. So through these holes all undesirable
movements enter into the consciousness, as water enters into a house with a
leaky roof.

However that may be, I believe it is a practice to be recommended to everyone:
to keep a certain time every day for trying to make the mind quiet, even, still.
And it is an undeniable fact that the more mentally developed one is, the quicker
one succeeds; and the more the mind is in a rudimentary state, the more difficult
it is.

Those who are at the bottom of the scale, who have never trained their minds,
find it necesssary to speak in order to think. It happens even that it is the sound
of their voice which enables them to associate ideas; if they do not express
them, they do not think. At a higher level there are those who still have to move
words about in their heads in order to think, even though they do not utter them
aloud. Those who truly begin to think are those who are able to think without
words, that is to say, to be in contact with the idea and express it through a wide
variety of words and phrases. There are higher degrees -- many higher degrees
-- but those who think without words truly begin to reach an intellectual state and
for them it is much easier to make the mind quiet, that is to say, to stop the
movement of associating the words that constantly move about like passers-by
in a public square, and to contemplate an idea in silence.

I emphasize this fact because there are quite a few people who, when mental
silence has been transmitted to them by occult means, are immediately alarmed
and afraid of losing their intelligence. Because they can no longer think, they
fear they may become stupid! But to cease thinking is a much higher
achievement than to be able to spin out thoughts endlessly and it demands a
much greater development.

So from every point of view, and not only from the spiritual point of view, it is
always very good to practise silence for a few minutes, at least twice a day, but it
must be a true silence, not merely abstention from talking.